Currently, individual investor data and the actual performance of individual investor returns are not transparent. There also is no platform that allows for the formal sharing of actual/authenticated/verifiable individual investment information with others. As a consequence, the entire $100 B investment advisory and portfolio management industry and $10 T mutual fund industry have preyed upon investor insecurity and confusion. The lack of a universal standardized set of benchmarks for independent advisors, investment managers, and mutual fund managers has resulted in billions of dollars in wasted fees annually as individuals fail to meet basic return metrics. Coupled with the popping of the Internet investment bubble, corporate scandals, Wall Street analyst conflicts of interests, etc. many individuals no longer trust professional financial service providers and instead rely on friends and family when making their investment decisions.
Consumer research indicates that friends and family are the most trusted source for investment information and that people by and large do not trust professionals for advice. There are now more than 35 MM active online brokerage accounts and 40 MM American investors who do not rely on a financial advisor to make their important investment decisions. And, those who do so are becoming more and more involved in managing their advisors' decisions. With nearly 75% of mutual funds underperforming their respective indices after accounting for fees, individual investors would have been better off over the past twenty years buying the stocks of the fund companies themselves rather than consuming their services. More, new research out of Harvard Business School suggests that the top decile of individual investors consistently beat the market by 4 basis points per day, or 10% annually. It is no wonder that the Annual Securities Industry Association Investor Survey found that nearly 70% of surveyed investors believe “financial advisors and advisory firms put their own interests ahead of their clients.” This sentiment has been steadily and consistently rising since 1999.
There is also strong empirical evidence that suggest that the collective decision-making of a group of individuals making guesses about a subject that can be quantified, often best “expert” sentiment. In the book “The Wisdom of Crowds” by James Surowiecki, the author provides many examples that support this theory. The famous example is the finding that the average of a collective of guesses of the number of jellybeans in a jar comes very close to the actual number; a better guess than the single best guesses individually. As this relates to the stock market, Wharton professor J. Scott Armstrong wrote that he “could find no studies that showed an important advantage for expertise” over individuals. Marshall Wace, a $10 B hedge fund based in the UK, has created a proprietary system, called TOPS, to take advantage of this reality. The firm has created a platform for 1,500 brokers around the world to send in their best investment ideas, which Marshall Wace then runs through its proprietary algorithms. Marshall Wace has been one of the top performing hedge funds in the world over the past few years, relying on these collective ideas. Last, Internet startup PicksPal (www.pickspal.com), a website that allows its users to guess the outcome of sporting events, has uncovered a similar outperformance by a group of its top pickers. PicksPal's overall record against Las Vegas betting lines has been 562-338, a win rate of 63%. In college basketball, the win rate is 66%. In pro football, the win rate is 62%. They are even getting a 52% win rate in pro hockey. In other words, the collective guesses of its top users are besting betting markets.
Consequently, there is a need for a system that will eliminate the uncertainty and intimidation around personal investments by automating and formalizing the current practice of shared peer investment advice with actual, actionable, real-time data. Conventional systems used in the investment business have not yet specifically addressed these consumer needs around investment data but there are a few similar and related technologies and services that have focused on aggregating data principally for viewing.
For example, the Open Financial Exchange (OFX) Standard is a specification for the electronic exchange of financial data between financial institutions, business and consumers via the Internet. Created by CheckFree, Intuit and Microsoft in early 1997, Open Financial Exchange supports a wide range of financial activities including consumer and small business banking, consumer and small business bill payment, bill presentment, tax information, and investments tracking, including stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and 401(k) account details. Open Financial Exchange defines how financial services companies can exchange financial data over the Internet with the users of transactional Web sites, thin clients and personal financial software. Open Financial Exchange streamlines the process financial institutions need to connect to multiple customer interfaces, processors and systems integrators. The Open Financial Exchange specification is publicly available for implementation by any financial institution or vendor. As of March 2004 OFX is supported by over 2,000 banks and brokerages as well as major payroll processing companies.
Other examples of conventional systems include Quicken and Microsoft Money. These systems are Personal Financial Management software that allow users to download and view their financial information from a variety of accounts. For example, Quicken provides access to approximately 2,900 participating financial institutions. Both Quicken and Money allow a user to enter in their username and passwords and automatically download transaction and balance information from those accounts. Further, many of these financial institutions allow users to download “Web Connect” data directly from their sites to users' hard drives for importation later.
As yet another example of a conventional system, Yodlee provides personalized consumer financial solutions to banks, brokerages, and portals. Operating predominantly as an Application Service Provider (ASP), Yodlee has integrated with, and provides services for AOL, Bank of America, Charles Schwab, Chase, Fidelity, Merrill Lynch, MSN, and Wachovia. The Yodlee solutions are powered by a technology known as Account Aggregation, which is built into the Yodlee Platform. This Platform now powers financial service offerings for over 100 financial service providers (FSPs) and their more than 6 million consumers, processing millions of account updates daily in a highly secure, scalable, reliable way.
These examples show that conventional systems used in the investment business have not yet specifically addressed consumer needs around investment data. Consequently, there is a need for a system that helps the now 90 MM and growing individual investors in the U.S. make better, smarter, and more efficient investment decisions with their $16 T in investable assets using the collective knowledge and actual performance of their peers.
Incorporation by Reference
Each patent, patent application, and/or publication mentioned in this specification is herein incorporated by reference in its entirety to the same extent as if each individual patent, patent application, and/or publication was specifically and individually indicated to be incorporated by reference.